They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, you know, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people: Don't come and bother us, because we will kill you. Bush - Joint News Conference with Blair - 28 July '06

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The tragedy of the bridge

AzzamanTerrorists have destroyed the Sarrafiya Bridge of which millions of Baghdadis entertain good old memories. The bridge, built seventy years ago and the oldest in Baghdad, was hit by a truck bomb explosion on April 12, sending several cars toppling into the River Tigris below.

Scores of people were killed and injured and the search for the dead is still continuing.

The bridge was a symbol of Baghdad and had escaped destruction by U.S. bombers in 1991 Gulf War which destroyed two major bridges in the capital.

We cannot believe the bombing of Sarrafiya Bridge to have been perpetrated by Iraqis because it is difficult to imagine Iraqis intentionally trying to obliterate their own heritage and culture.

The bridge was part of Baghdad cultural legacy and a place where boys and girls, men and women, young and elderly used to cross or spend time on the shores of the Tigris River, contemplating its majestic girders or watching trains and cars pass by. Link

The terrorists who carried out this heinous crime wanted to remove the few remaining landmarks of our heritage which link Iraqis as a nation to their past and give them hope of the future.Link

"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere,
or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to
make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too
intelligent."George Orwell

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship
in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object
of torture is torture. The object of power is power."George Orwell

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who
use the abstract words of glory, honour, and patriotism to mask the cries of the
wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They
know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in
stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage
and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important
memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished
know the essence of war - death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see
that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction.
They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a
turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives
about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as
well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill
with impunity. But the words of the vanquished come later, sometimes long after
the war, when grown men and women unpack the suffering they endured as children,
what it was like to see their mother or father killed or taken away, or what it
was like to lose their homes, their community, their security, and be discarded
as human refuse. But by then few listen. The truth about war comes out, but
usually too late. We are assured by the war-makers that these stories have no
bearing on the glorious violent enterprise the nation is about to inaugurate.
And, lapping up the myth of war and its sense of empowerment, we prefer not to
look.Chris Hedges

Armaments bring only disasters. When one accumulates them, this damages
the economy, and if one puts them to use, then they destroy people on both
sides. Consequently, only a madman can believe that armaments are the principal
means in the life of society. No, they are an enforced loss of human energy, and
what is more are for the destruction of man himself. If people do not show
wisdom, then in the final analysis they will come to a clash, like blind moles,
and then reciprocal extermination will begin.Khrushchev to Kennedy

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Disobedience is the foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
[Henry David Thoreau]